metaphortunate son

Brain: What if these two characters met each other. They sure would have a lot to talk about.
Me: Brain no.
Brain: It wouldn't even be that many panels.
Me: Brain I need to sleep.
Brain: Imagine all those gorgeous clothes to draw. It could be mostly close-ups.
Me: …It would be fun…
Brain: Just write down the dialogue.
Me: I'll just sketch the layout. God, I haven't even touched my stylus in months.
Brain: And start off with an establishing crowd shot.
Me: No! Fuck! What? No crowd shots! I haven't even touched my stylus in months!
Brain: It reeeeeally makes a lot more sense if you actually have two crowd shots.
Me: You said it was gonna all be close-ups!
Brain: Also I'm gonna need you to spend three days looking up architecture & clothing of the 1500s.
Me: No!
Brain: And combing through six separate books for details of clothing and hairstyles.
Me: I hate you!
Brain: I should note that exactly three people other than you will be interested in this comic. And they won't actually like it, because your dialogue isn't that good.
Me: Fuck you!
Brain: Draw it or I'll torture you for months.
Me: Fuck!

Oh my gooooooood

It is 10:45, I am so tired I can literally not see straight, but I have this possible job opportunity, IDK, not that I mind my current job but this could really be pretty exciting, so I am trying to get a resume together by tomorrow. I haven't updated my resume in six years. I HAVE DONE A LOT OF SHIT OVER THE PAST SIX YEARS.

What are words

brainwane premiered a new vid at Wiscon 2015!

It's called "Pipeline".

Because the tech industry's got a blank space, baby. And it'll write your name.

Today I spent two hours trying to de-rat poop the garage and the basement. I now understand something deeply in my soul that I did not truly understand before. I mean, if you had said it to me, I would have agreed, but I didn't know it. And that thing is: whatever you do not clean will be dirty.

God. Think about all the parts of your house that you don't clean. Under the stove. Behind the refrigerator. The cracks in the windowsills. The space under the sink. The gaps where things don't quite meet. The rot under the plywood, the crumbling of the foundations. Think of the dirt collecting there. Think of the silverfish and spider eggs and black mold waiting there to diffuse out into the air you breathe. It turns out we have never mopped the garage floor and as a result parts of it are made out of humus. There were parts so dusty I went to mop them with my 10% bleach solution and it just beaded up and ran off. Waves of spiders ran from me. I didn't even get to it all, because I would have had to move the 50 lbs of old paint cans that the previous owners left us. I am never going to feel clean again, I am never going to feel safe in my house again, and I kind of want to secede from my skin because it's been touching everything around me.

Did I do right?

The Junebug came home from daycare the other day with the story of how his friend* Prince** had kicked him when they were lining up to go out to outdoor play. He said it had hurt. That he hadn't seen it coming, that it had come by surprise. That the teachers hadn't noticed or hadn't interfered. Which seems legit, because the teachers tell us about incidents of fighting, and no one told me about that one.

At his daycare they teach the kids to say "No!" and block the other kids with their hands if they try to push or hit or bite. He said that he said "No!" but that Prince kicked him anyway.

I asked what he did. He said he had cried. He said he thought he'd cry till I came.

(That small dry snapping sound you just heard was my heart breaking in half.)

(I should note for the record that when I actually did come to pick him up he was laughing and running around outside, totally non-traumatized, and that he told me the story without seeming to suffer any emotional pain in the retelling.)

I said that Prince should not kick him. People shouldn't hurt each other.

I pointed out that if Prince keeps hurting him (and Prince did bite him the next day, hard enough to leave a mark; and also pinched him, according to the Junebug; and the teachers did tell me about that one) then he should think about whether he wants to play with him anymore, or whether it would be better to play with other kids.

(Note for the record that the Junebug had grabbed Prince's puzzle pieces right before Prince bit him. We talked about how that's not the right way to play with someone else too.)

I generalized from that that if we hurt our friends, then they won't want to be our friends anymore; so he should not hurt other kids.

I told him that if Prince tries to hurt him again, he shouldn't just say "No!"; he should yell it as loud as he can. That way the teachers won't be able to ignore it. I told him that was the one time it was okay to use his outside voice inside. We practiced yelling "No!" as loud as we could, outside. He's, uh. He's naturally gifted in that area. He can produce a very loud "No!" We'll practice some more.

I told him that he must never kick anyone smaller than him, or who can't defend themself. Like, he must never kick babies; he must never kick Rocket.

I told him that he must never kick anyone first. (Visions of Han Solo dancing in my head.)

And then I told him that if someone kicks him again, and he screams "No!" and they don't stop, and the teachers don't help…to kick them back.

Did I do right?

I feel like you should never tell your kids to hurt another kid! It seems wrong! But I could not think of what else to tell him. Kids are gonna fight. Kids are gonna attack each other. I know my parents told me never to hurt anyone else. It seems like the right thing to say. But in reality I remember that I just took that to mean that my parents were completely out of touch with anything like my reality and there was no point in asking them for advice. "Just ignore them," my ass. "Just walk away," yeah sure I'm going to teach people that they can kick me out of any space by lifting a finger. That'll give me a peaceful time in the future, no doubt. My. Ass.

And there is no way in hell I'm going to tell him to tell a teacher. Yeah yeah, in an ideal world that's the way it would work; if there were people in charge of enforcing the social contract in a space, you could report violations to them and they would take care of it. Back to childhood reality: it's social suicide among the kids AND the teachers. Nobody, not even the supposed social contract enforcers, likes, or listens to, a tattletale.

So….what do you tell them? I'm serious. I'm officially asking for advice. If you have a solution that's worked for you, I want to hear it.

I think I did wrong. But I don't know how to do better.

------------------------------

*Yes, friend; one of the two kids he plays with all the time.

**Not his real name.

I had some kind of minor nervous breakdown this weekend, I guess? I just kind of lost my ability to, like…make plans.

Or eye contact.

The particularly good/bad timing is that my sister-in-law and her husband are visiting, which is bad because I like them and yet I spent all of Saturday blatantly, horribly ignoring them and staring at my phone, and good because they spent most of Saturday entertaining my children and so I was able to do that. I really did spend all day reading. I haven't done that since the Junebug was born. *sigh* It was wonderful.

I didn't read all of Tana French's books that one day, but that's what I read that day, and over this past while I have been mainlining them all. I resisted reading them despite jae's glowing recommendation because I checked out the summaries and decided I just wasn't into that much child harm these days - well, they are murder mysteries, you have to expect a certain amount of murder. But then every time I turned around someone was drooling over the latest one, so finally I decided to start with The Likeness, on account of how no kids are the victims in that one. And then of course I read all the rest of them in a row. She really is excellent. Her books are a perfect illustration of what China Mieville says about detective fiction:

that unreality function is one of my favorite things in crime fiction: I've said this before in various other venues, but I think the logic of crime novels is not really "realistic," but is a kind of dream-logic. I don't mean that as a criticism but praise—I love the oneiric feeling of logic that is logical but that is punctuated by certain elisions.

On a much more cheerful note, and another story to scarf down in great chunks, Sarah Rees Brennan has finished The Turn of the Story! God, she's going to hate me for describing it this way, but: imagine that someone took the three main characters from Harry Potter and stuck them in a blender. Hit "Frappe" a few times. All right, pour them out, and now the redheaded born sidekick is also the smartest witch in his year and also the neglected child in a cupboard under the stairs. Except that there's no witches, but you know what I mean. The born hero is now the one with a huge and lovely family, and Hermione is a stone killer and the most delightfully misandrist elf you'd ever care to see (think Legolas, not Dobby.) It's not fanfic but it is a riff on genre tropes. In a sense it's the opposite of Lev Grossman's Magician novels. If Grossman had felt like writing about a guy who was fun to read about instead of The Douchebag Who Walked The Earth Like A Man, Quentin Coldwater might be a little bit like Elliot Schafer. Also, I might be interested in reading more than ten pages of the Magician novels. Yeah, I know all the problems with demanding ~likeability~ in characters, whatever. I'm a grown person, there are plenty of reasons to read books with unlikeable characters. If you as an author GIVE me those reasons. If you don't, then reading an otherwise dreary, forgettable book entirely about assholes is just me choosing to spend a few hours of my really truly irreplaceably precious free time with assholes, and I just…I don't want to do that. I don't believe in Elliot Schafer. No teenage boy has ever been that consistently kind and smart and brave and funny. But I don't really give a shit, because sometimes, for fun, I like to spend time with people who are kind, and smart, and brave, and funny. Even if they're fictional. I find it enjoyable! Go figure. Also go read the story, it is a prequel but it is complete in itself, and the ending is not what I thought it was going to be, which is always nice. It does suffer a bit from Rees Brennan's strength-that-she-leans-on-until-it-turns-into-a-weakness, which is that she is a very funny writer, so she writes very funny characters, to the point where sometimes their voices are not as distinct from one another as they could be. But, as weaknesses in free, fun stories go, "characters are too witty" is one that I will take. If this month has you needing a unicorn chaser, this story has got that covered for you. Heh. On a number of levels.

Music: I am still working through norah's Femcees mix, so no comment on that yet, but other than that I keep going back to Angel Haze. Oh, also, if you ever wanted to hear what has got to be Strexcorp's theme song, it's fabulous.

Going back to the small nervous breakdown: I think I need to make fewer plans. There are a million things I want to do, and I love my friends, I want to see you all! This….may be something I need to try to slow down on. I think the overhead is starting to get to me. I really gotta work on getting some more alone time.

You see me on the bus, wrangling a baby, a toddler, a stroller, a backpack.

Helpful: Offer us your seat. Offer to hold the stroller for me. I really appreciate that. I love that the Junebug sees people helping one another as an everyday part of the world.

Helpy: Lift the toddler into the seat without asking so that he gets scared & cries. Physically try to wrestle the stroller out of my hand. Demand that I take your seat even if the baby will only be calm when I stand & bounce him.

Seriously, if I say "Thanks, I've got it," FUCKING LET ME HAVE IT.

Hey people who take baths, and claim it is relaxing:

How does that work? Like, specifically, how often do you clean your bathtub?

Currently Rocket is bathed in a small baby tub, and the Junebug takes baths in our ordinary tub, and let me tell you I am counting the days until he grows out of reacting to showers like we have chosen to wash him in the special Flesh-Flensing Acid Shower of Death. Because right now he gets washed twice a week, ordinarily, and I have to scrub the tub down first, at least a quick wipe with one of those Lysol wet wipes, because, Jesus. I mean, we shower in that thing daily. I’ve seen what we pull out of the shower drain. It’s gross. I don’t want him sitting in that. Instead I worry about how well I’ve been able to rinse the tub and about whether it’s poisoning him sitting in Soft Scrub residue. So, like, I walk by Lush, I look at the bath bombs, it sounds nice, but then I think about the choice of sitting in dregs of hair and scum or else scrubbing the tub and then sitting in bleach eddies. Plus, if I got a bath bomb, probably scrubbing the tub afterwards as well. How does it get to be relaxing?

I cannot even with this FUCKING DAY. This fucking week!

As Mr. E points out, it is not really that surprising that on the day that two adults and one toddler get the stomach flu, or some such virus, that that is the day the sewer breaks down and has to have a plumber in. And luckily the Junebug was much more lightly sick than the adults. No diarrhea, just puking. A few times. Mostly on the carpet. Or so I hear, because I wasn't taking care of it; I was in bed for two days, basically, with occasional fast and horrible trips to the bathroom. And my in-laws are in town, which was lucky! For us, I mean, not for them, because my mother-in-law was the other person who got badly sick.

It is bad luck that this was the same week that Rocket got his second tooth in, though.

Also I got a new phone! I believe in running things into the ground, but my old phone was older than my kids - I have such strong memories of lying in the tub reading on my Kindle app and feeling terrible during the Junebug's birth - and it finally started to die. Amusingly, what it started to do was get random gibberish ghost input on the screen. Not at all amusingly, this random gibberish actually did stuff; including uninstalling apps; including the app that I have been using to track my budget and expenses and stupidly, like an idiot, hadn't backed up. And it's a standalone local only app! So! A year's worth of data gone.

But at least I have a new phone. An iPhone, even!

And this morning, I would have been bitching about - I know this is the definition of a My Diamond Encrusted Shoes Are Too Tight problem, but when I decided to switch from Android to Apple, I hadn't actually realized you were stuck with the Apple keyboard. I knew you could download mail apps, IM apps, GMaps, I hadn't realized you couldn't use a different keyboard! And holy shit, the Apple keyboard SUCKS! It's wrist-breaking! And all the apps cost like twice as much! And the interface is so elegant and shit it's impossible to figure out how to do anything!

And as I say, that's what I was grumpy about this morning, before I went to the bathroom and the phone slid out of my pocket and landed in the toilet.

And now I am beyond grumpy about my very, very expensive coaster.

Yes, it's in a bag of rice. I am trying to be calm about this.

It is harder when I am still not feeling well; and the house is a trashed nightmare because we have been sick and Mr. E has bronchitis, and he and my father in law have been running around taking care of the sickies and the kids; and nothing is clean; and I accidentally worked an extra hour today because my work hasn't changed the clocks on the walls, and I didn't have my phone to check the time on.

And today I had to be That Parent who writes in to the Junebug's daycare and very, very, very politely suggests that the teachers should not start dividing up the motherfucking TWO YEAR OLDS into boys vs. girls because goddammit do we really have to start this already. Do we HAVE to. Mr. E jumped in immediately to back me up, which was lovely, but still.

And the Junebug still hates me and responds to every single time he sees me by sobbing or telling me to go away. Except Saturday, we played together in the morning and it was lovely. Afternoon, he was back to telling me to go away. I tell you this because ten years from now when he really does go to boarding school, I want you to know it's not because I want to get rid of him. It's not. He's going to want to go. I know what a kid who would chew his own leg off to get away from his mother looks like.

Last night I was getting a last snack before going to bed and suddenly a spider the size of my thumbnail appeared dangling from the top of the cupboard 4 inches directly in front of my eyes. And nope! I did not have the emotional resources to manage it right then! I have a note from the universe, goddammit! I am excused from Giant Spiders this week!

But everyone else was sick or asleep with earplugs in or under 3 years old. It was me and Giant Spider, and Giant Spider refused to read my note.

So I had to deal with it.

I did deal with it. I did. I remain extremely grateful that I am able to deal with it. I don't take that for granted. But Christ, can't we build character at a Miami condo or a casino somewhere? Or, I take that back. Can't we build character somewhere with no puking or losing money at all?

My fuchsias are succumbing to some sort of fuchsia disease. New growth, buds and leaves, comes out pale green, fuzzy, and sort of twisted and clubbed. It's very Elephant Man like, if the Elephant Man were more of an Elephant Plant. Plant body horror.

Something horrible has decided to make a home by gluing together the leaves of my primroses.

Birds eat my seedlings down to the stalk. The red chard is totally gone, nothing but a few sad stems. The kale is almost gone. But it's true of anything I plant. The spinach gave up. I tried putting chicken wire on top of the pots, which worked great until the seedlings got too tall for it, at which point I had to take it off and the birds began their reign of destruction. Feathery little bastards.

Today I am a sad and frustrated gardener. Any thoughts? I have this "anti-disease" spray that claims to be okay for organic gardening and smells like vinegar so it's probably worthless. And an anti-bug spray soap that seems to keep the aphids off, anyway.